


The Melting Stars

by attica_writes



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas Party, Community: dhr_advent, F/M, Muggles, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1065228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attica_writes/pseuds/attica_writes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the holidays and Hermione Granger, usually not much of a drinker, stocks up her liquor cabinet. Draco Malfoy uncharacteristically makes a grand gesture. And someone falls off a roof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Melting Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by and loosely based on the comedic genius of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones's Diary, which in turn was inspired by and based on Jane Austen’s timeless Pride and Prejudice. Huge thanks to the lovely mods for putting up with my endless questions.
> 
> Prompt: Stars

“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.”  
\- Matt Groening

_Present Day_

During the holidays, Hermione Jean Granger stocks her minimalistic, median-income flat full of bottles of alcohol.  Not much of a drinker for most of the year, she makes an exception for the months Christmas songs provide the soundtrack for some of the most humiliating and socially awkward moments of her life.  It’s a fact she has learned to accept: around the time Christmas lights appear in town, Hermione Granger turns into the kind of woman who has to drink to keep her sanity.

Especially around her Uncle Geoffrey, who seems to have the uncanny ability of cornering her at every holiday party.

“Whatever happened to that Ron fellow? You know, the ginger one? Looks a bit like a tomato when he’s had a little too much to drink?”

Ron is her Uncle Geoffrey’s favorite topic of conversation. Too bad Ron had stopped showing up for holidays around her house two years ago, otherwise it might have been a little more relevant for discussion.

“We broke up,” she clarifies for the thousandth time that night. “Three years ago, actually. So I don’t expect you’ll be seeing him around here any time in the future.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” says her Uncle Geoffrey, gratuitously adding more Jameson to his coffee. “I quite liked him. Aside from the tomato face bit. Thought for sure you two kids would tie the knot… good thing I didn’t bet on it!” He snorted, laughing heartily at her expense, a bit of coffee dribbling down his chin

Hermione flashes him a smile so forced it is almost painful. “I’ll pass along your hello,” she says through her teeth.

“Oh no, no, that won’t be necessary.” He shakes his head, finally leaving her. Hermione takes this chance to slink away from her corner and make her way to the kitchen, steal a bottle of vodka from underneath the sink, and sneak it up to her childhood room.

She quietly locks the door behind her, flipping on the lights. She sighs and, cradling the bottle to her chest, sinks to the floor, her back against the foot of her bed. She takes a quick survey around her room. There is still a group of dusty, glass-eyed stuffed animals sitting on top of her dresser, which she almost swears is looking at her with a judgmental glint in their empty eyes until she blinks it away.  She runs her fingers along the worn spines of her books and encyclopedias. Porcelain horses and pictures of her youth unabashedly smiling with her beaver-like teeth. This place was a time capsule, a place she hardly thought about until the holidays came along and she was back to locking herself inside it.

 _Some holiday traditions are hard to break_ , she muses to herself. She takes another swig. Oh well.

She spends some time in there, puts on a few records, rereads old letters and badly-written diary entries. Then, feeling a bit too cooped up, she opens her window and climbs out. The cold sobers her up a little bit; her fingers icy against the panel, swinging her legs over and slowly making her down the roof with a newfound concentration.

After all, she just wants to escape for a little bit, not kill herself. She imagines the headlines anyway: Woman Slips off Roof Due to Suffocation of Overbearing Christmas Spirit. Oh, and just a dash of loneliness. It’s unfair, really, how easy it is to get lonely when the weather gets cold and the Christmas lights become as ubiquitous as the sirens of globalized materialism. If she was sloshed enough, she might’ve even considered writing a letter to the Prime Minister about it.

She sits there and watches the stars. How silent and beautiful and so far away. Is she having a poetic moment? Here? All by herself? Does that even count?

She is rarely allowed these moments. Her life and career in Wizarding London make that impossible. Even so, the stars don’t shine as bright there, in the instance that she does stop to take a breath and look up. But she allows herself to get sad and sentimental just for a minute. For one minute. Then she is going to go back through the window to her childhood room, hide the vodka bottle, kiss her mum and dad goodbye, and Apparate on home. Then perhaps make herself a very potent drink.

The minute passes. She clutches onto a slippery roof tile and tries to hoist herself back up, but not before she hears a voice travel through the frigid air, cutting through her spine.

“Granger? What the fuck are you doing up there?”

She freezes, whipping her head around. There, below her, is Draco Malfoy in an expensively tailored coat, looking up at her with furrowed brows and a look of thinly disguised alarm and irritation. The alarm is new to her. The irritation, not so much.

“Trying to see if I can fly, what do you think?” she snaps at him. She stares at him for just a minute, trying to make sure he is not a manifestation of her recent alcoholic binge.

After being out here in the cold for a while, she can finally feel her face again. The rest of her body, too. Just the sight of him makes her blood run again. Which is unfair, really. Nobody should ever have this much control over her body temperature.

“What are you even doing here?” she says, her breath a white fog. Her tone is acerbic but there is something else there, something not as conducive to her constitution surrounding him – a little bit of water. Saltwater. “Don’t you, I don’t know, spontaneously combust if you enter the Muggle World?”

He scoffs at her like she’s an idiot. “Well, I’m still in one piece, aren’t I?”

“Unfortunately,” she mutters to herself.

But as she’s saying this, her foot accidentally slips from one of the iced-over tiles, and before she knows it, she’s skidding down her own roof.

And her last thought is: _How the fuck did Draco Malfoy end up on my lawn?_

o

_Three Days Ago_

She decides to start the story Malfoy’s holiday party. Malfoy Enterprise is a big player in the postwar economy, which means seeing Malfoy is inevitable in her line of work. Seeing Malfoy in the extravagance of his obscenely large manor with his fountains and barely-clothed Grecian goddess statues has become a staple in her holidays, however resistant of it she initially was. It is the height of sophistication and she spends most of it avoiding the host and drinking the time by until she can finally go home. Just like any other holiday party, in her opinion.

Every year Malfoy has a new theme. Gold accents or ice sculptures or world famous harpists. This year’s theme is silver and emerald, which in theory can come off a little tawdry, but Pansy Parkinson is Malfoy manor’s resident holiday decorator. This is the same Pansy Parkinson that was featured in the number three slot on Witch Weekly’s Twenty Most Eligible Witches, in the Hot Homemaker category. Hermione had been a few spots behind, taking up a humble number seven, even after her numerous insistences of her name being taken out.

Anyway, this is all to say that Pansy Parkinson has a devilish sense of good style, which she decides to prove – year after year – at the most exclusive and largest holiday party of the year: Malfoy’s.

Hermione takes a flute of champagne from one of the servers as she walks through the doors, taking a sip as she absorbs every finely moussed coif and sinewy, sparkly women backless gowns. She says hello to her coworkers and makes nice with Ministry officials she threatens to hex on a weekly basis. Malfoy’s annual party is where tense work relations and tense former school acquaintances can pretend all is merry, thanks to a never-ending supply of Wizarding Europe’s most luxurious alcohol. Even she is not exempt from this.

She spies Malfoy across the room, standing next to Pansy Parkinson, who is dressed in her usual attire: a long, form-fitting, ivory gown that would make even any respectable woman want to shoot herself. In his right hand is a glass of whiskey, neat. He catches her eye for a split second before returning his gaze to the Ministry official they are both conversing with, and she lets her eyes linger on that newly-tensed muscle in his jaw, before disappearing into the crowd.

This is their tradition. She mingles, he mingles. Not once do they overlap – which is admittedly sometimes more strategy than fate. But she can feel his eyes on her, even through the shoulders of very nice men, just as she hopes he can, when he is yet again cornered by a beautiful girl who practically molests his arm through his robes.

The steeper her alcoholic intake, the more she finds herself questioning whether this is the kind of thing she wants, or could ever possibly be happy with. She is Witch Weekly’s number seven hottest witch in Wizarding Britain (not that she cares about titles), damn it. And she is very fucking eligible.

“Hello there, Granger.” She shifts her downward gaze to Blaise Zabini’s immaculate bone structure in front of her. “It’s nice to see you, as usual. Are you enjoying yourself?”

Behind him she spots Malfoy just a few feet away, having taken a few moments’ repose from mingling, staring at her from over the lip of his glass as he drinks.

“I am, thanks,” she says.

He chuckles pleasantly. “Better not try acting, Granger. Or if you do, you could use a few classes.”

She smiles at him. “I think I’m quite well-suited at my current job,” she says.

“I agree,” Blaise grins. He raises his glass. “Let’s have a toast then. To being well-suited for our current jobs.”

Laughing – this is one of the few genuinely amicable interactions she’s had of the night – she clinks her glass with his.

By the time he’s excused herself from her in favor of other business executives, Malfoy is gone from her peripheral view. She finishes her drink and decides to take a stroll out in the gardens.

She can tell Malfoy’s charmed the garden because the air is quite temperate even without a coat. She passes a few people on their way back into the party, and is relieved to find some solitary out underneath the stars, surrounded by – however extensively manicured – nature.

She’s been here a few times before, under the same conditions – Christmas harp music, guaranteed alcohol consumption, and glamorous fairy lights – but she never misses a moment to marvel at the genuine beauty of the Malfoy gardens. The manor is a bit too large for her, full of unused rooms that will probably never encounter human touch for as long as it stands, not to mention an aura of dark history that has never sat well with her. But the garden is different. The garden, she’s heard, was Narcissa Malfoy’s creation. It extends for acres and is home to a labyrinth, a greenhouse, a menagerie, and a self-sustainable lake.

She gets rid of her heels and starts at the fountain, before making her way to the labyrinth. She is just a few minutes in when she hears voices of two men in conversation, and catches a whiff of cigar smoke. It only takes her a few seconds of listening to realize who they are. It’s not hard – there are very few men in her life who have such distinctly posh accents.

“This happens every year, Draco. You have this party, it’s a smashing success, and your face still looks like a baby’s smacked arse,” says the man she is almost sure is Blaise Zabini.” I’ve spent some time trying to figure out why that is, and I think I’ve found the reason: female companionship. You’re sorely lacking it. A few years ago there wasn’t a single time I didn’t see you when there wasn’t some new chit on your arm. Now I’m afraid your bed’s gone a bit dusty, and that’s why you’ve been such a Scrooge.”

“The state of my bed does not concern you, Zabini,” says Malfoy, his tone cutting.

“I’m afraid it does. It pains me to see you like this, not to mention our partners have noticed. Nobody likes a Christmas grump. Now how can we fix this?” There is a slight pause, and she imagines Blaise stroking his chin, although this is something she has never seen him do. “I know! What about Granger?”

Her blood runs cold.

“She’s gotten better-looking over the years, hasn’t she?” he continues. “Bloody hell, she was number seven on Witch Weekly’s Most Eligible Witches. She looks quite stunning when she tries. Granted, her line of work doesn’t usually have her dress in evening gowns.” Blaise lowly chuckles. “Which is quite a shame, actually. Who knew all that was under there?”

There is a tense silence, and she has to fight the urge to climb the wall and see Malfoy’s expression.

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” he finally replies, in a bored tone. “ _Me_ with _Granger_?”

Hermione blinks. Something inside her – something large and vital to her being – withers and dies.

“Frankly, I would rather fuck a paralyzed horse than ever be tempted to bed Granger.”

And that does it, really. The light goes out from within her. She imagines the night sky sucking its stars back in and falling down on her, enveloping her in darkness. She blocks out the rest of their conversation and, knowing she is emotionally unfit to make small talk with anyone, makes her way to the greenhouse. She thinks it is an appropriate place to fume.

She calms herself down there, but not before cursing his existence and lamenting why she ever came to his stupid holiday parties. She questions herself and her decision-making skills – the fact that she lacks them, or at the very least, leans towards making very bad ones. Taking up with Draco Malfoy in secret has had to have been the worst decision she’s made in her life. And the fact that she even cares about what he says about her! What a new low she’s dropped to. God, she is so genuinely depraved.

Finally, she makes up her mind to head home. She heads back to the party and makes a beeline for the coat closet. She wants so badly to be anywhere but here, and to erase the night’s revelations from her memory. She has an idea on exactly how to do this: vodka and Chaka Khan.

She shrugs on her coat, checking for her wand and clutch. She’s practically trembling with rage. Then she hears him.

“Granger.”

She freezes. She doesn’t want to turn around, to give him the satisfaction, but she does. This one last time, she does.

And there he is. For the first time that night, he is acknowledging her, actually within arm’s reach of her. He looks so confused at the sight of her in her coat and with her purse and she refuses to be endeared by it, not even a little. There was a time she marveled at any moment he forgot to pretend and let a semblance of what he actually felt shine through for her. Those times, she’s decided, are long gone.

His mercurial eyes are fixed on her. She wants to spit in them. Or gouge them out with fancy dinner forks. Either one.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll give you one guess, Malfoy,” she answers briskly. “And here’s a hint: it’s far, far away from here.”

He clenches his jaw, his eyes hardening at her. “Has something happened?”

She almost wants to laugh. This forced pretense gave him the expression of someone who hasn’t had a proper shit in a month.

“I don’t know, Malfoy,” she says. “It was going all right, but fucking a paralyzed horse would’ve surely livened things up, wouldn’t you say so? Maybe for next year. Just a little something to keep in mind.”

She takes momentary joy at the shock that ripples through his face. Usually an alabaster color, his face is practically ghostly now.

“Goodbye, then.”

She walks out, knowing full well he is still where she left him, staring after her. She knows he would never leave his own party to run after her, and he doesn’t.

She goes home.

o

The first thing she does is get out of that sodding dress. But carefully, because she mistakenly spent about two weeks of wages on it, before wrapping it back up and shoving it to the corner of her closet. She puts on a little Chaka Khan, damn whatever the neighbors might think. And she makes a conscious decision to skip the wine and go for the hard liquor.

It’ll be the New Year in just a few days’ time. She could start new.  She could extract every stolen glance and passionate shag, seal it in a pensieve, charm it to the weight of a brick, and toss it out to sea. That way it would be out of her, and it would have no way of festering like a cancer. Because that’s what he is, isn’t he? A sodding cancer. He’s inside you and he rots everything else that he touches. He’s a greedy bastard, always needing more space to grow.

At some point she stumbles out into her balcony.  Chaka Khan has reached the end of her track list, so she is left to contemplate and sulk in silence. It starts to snow, which makes it hard to see the stars. Either way, she decides she doesn’t give a damn about the stars. Not that they ever cared about her, anyway. They were probably already dead, just ghosts of what used to be there.

She’s good at that. Relying on things that are unavailable, that won’t show up for you when you need them, that’ll badmouth you when it’s convenient. Fucking stars. Fucking Draco.

“Fuck ‘em,” she mutters to herself, slamming the glass door behind her. “Fuck ‘em all.”

o

It is the next morning when she hears somebody knocking on her door. This is in the middle of her downing an extremely pungent hangover tonic – one of many to come, she’s assuming. The holidays are the only time she allows herself to go a bit disheveled, to lose some of that uptight, characteristic posture she retains for most of the year – in private, of course. 

She finally swallows the last of it, plugging her nose and making a face, feeling it already begin to soothe the pounding headache and nausea she’d woken up with.

“Who is it?” she calls. Disappointingly, the remnants of last night are still all too fresh, not diluted the least bit by her night serenading a vodka bottle.

“Granger, it’s me. Open up.”

Leave it to Draco Malfoy to feel that the world revolves around him enough to never see the need in saying his own name – no, in this world, he is just “Me.” Apparently that’s good enough. Sod him.

She scoffs. “How about fuck off?”

“You’re being a child.”

“ _Me_? A _child_? I’d take that over a crass-mouthed prick any day, thanks.”

A brief pause.  She glares at the door as if she’d recently acquired heat vision and was burning through the wood. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. But what did you expect me to say?”

She nears her door, arms tightly folded across her chest, firmly aware that this is the first conversation she’s ever had through furniture. “How about ‘thanks but no thanks’ or ‘she’s all right, but not really my cup of tea. Slaps on the back for the bloke who fancies her, though, and treats her well’?”

His tone is begrudging, which doesn’t help his case one bit. “Point taken. It was a poor choice of words.”

She almost wants to laugh at how clearly unrepentant and guilt-free he is about the incident. But had she expected anything different? This was Draco Malfoy. She’d known exactly the person he was the first moment she’d kissed him back, all those months ago. This is what kills her the most. The fact that she could have predicted this ending – him being a prat, her being bitter about it – from a million leagues away.

She’s so educated, so goddamn _intelligent_ , and even she isn’t exempt from making colossal errors in judgment.

“What gets me, _Draco_ , is that you never even said you were sorry for saying it. You said you were sorry I heard it.” She takes in a shuddering breath. It feels like needles in her lungs. “So I’m warning you. Go away. I’m not going to let you in. I’m never going to let you in. Not anymore.”

This is the end, she says to herself. The end of whatever they were. Whatever they had. The truth is that it wasn’t even important enough to warrant a name, or a label. They weren’t _together_ , not in so many words. But they’d been something. Sometimes an incredibly good something, and sometimes – like now – an inconvenient, humiliating, pride-degrading something. But _something_.

“Granger,” he says. There’s a heaviness in his voice she has to force herself not to dissect.  She is done rooting for him – for him to make that jump, to break through. She isn’t rooting for anybody but herself now. She’s learned that lesson; she’s paid that price. “This isn't over. We’re going to talk about this, sooner or later. Like sodding adults. Face to face, not through somebody’s flat door.”

As soon as she knows he’s left, Hermione begins packing her things. Her mind is dead set on the one place Draco Malfoy would never have the gall to follow her into: the Muggle world.

o

_Present Day_

She wakes up on the ground. For a minute she thinks it’s really happened, she’s really dead, until the waterlogged splotches in her vision clear up to Malfoy’s concerned face above her. She knows God (or his more devilish counterpart) could never be this cruel.

He has his wand in his hand. The bastard saved her.

“You hit your head coming down the roof,” he tells her. “And you’re bleeding a little bit, as well as may be suffering from a minor concussion, but otherwise you should be fine.” His sarcasm is almost as biting as the cold. He tries to help her sit up. “Aside from being a drunk and a _buffoon_ for deciding an iced-over roof would be a safe place to stargaze.”

She slaps his hands away, her anger chasing away her wooziness. "Get away from me. Don't touch me. Who do you think you are?" she fumes. "You don't get to save me, all right? Not like that."

"Apparently," he snarls, "I just did. But if you would like to climb back on that roof and fall down without me lifting a finger to help you, then be my guest. I'm sure you'd love spending Christmas in a neck brace in hospital."

She glares at him. "As a matter of fact, that sounds like a happy alternative to what is currently staring me in the face."

She helps herself up. She is soaked in ice water but he makes her blood boil and somehow this evens her out. She begins heading back to the front door when she brings her hand to her head and finds her palm covered in water and a little bit of blood.

Whatever. Who hasn’t bled a little for love? Or lack of it, apparently.

"Granger," he calls out to her.

"Get off my lawn." She trudges through the layer of snow. “If I turn around, and you’re still there, I will hex your face into oblivion. I mean it.”

"I'm sorry, all right?" he says, finally, and she stops at the hint of desperation she catches from the lilt in his voice.

"Sorry for what?"

"Bloody hell, what do you want -- a list?"

"Yes, I think I'm owed a list, actually."

He sighs impatiently. "I was -- I saw you with Blaise, and I didn't like it. I didn't mean what I said, obviously. It was an incredibly poor choice of words. Quite possibly even the poorest in the history of poor word choice. But you get that, don't you? I'm so _good_ at that. Being cruel. Finding ways to cut people down, to minimize their importance, because that would mean I was in control."

She whirls around, her cold, soggy hair whipping her in the face. "Am I supposed to pity you? Because you were trained to be a bully? Because you don’t handle jealousy well? Well, _boo_ fucking _hoo_ , Malfoy. If it's control you like so much, then why don't you fuck that in hidden alcoves instead?"

He just looks at her, just a little bit stung. _There’s longing in there_ , a small voice peeps out in her brain. _He’s never looked at anyone the way he looks at you. Like there’s something real, something that warms him up inside_. But there is a problem with her conscience. It always argues on his behalf, even when he stays silent himself. And she is not here to fight his battles.

This, she reminds herself, is the problem when you make the mistake of liking someone so much. Every part of your body gets addicted to them. Your brain, too. He short-circuited her synapses and this is her first step to rewiring herself back to normal again – by banishing him from her life.

"I like you,” he finally says, and she is almost dumbfounded by how much his voice sounds like release. “I like you so much it's literally _maddening_. I hate being at my own fucking holiday party knowing I can't touch you – not to even brush your hair across your shoulder. I hate watching you across the room, talking to Blaise or Creevey, or catching a look at every man's face when they see you -- in a fucking _dress_."

There is a bubble of air in her throat. "I'm not yours," she says, hoarsely but firmly. "You don't own me, Malfoy."

He nods. "I know.”

"And I don't deserve to be hidden like I'm something to be ashamed of. I'm not. You're not, either. Anybody would be _lucky_ to have us, Malfoy. And it's silly because I can't even remember now why we ever agreed to do this in secret. Why we ever thought it was a good idea, why we ever thought it wouldn't hurt our own pride." She shakes her head. He doesn’t speak up, so she continues determinedly. Honestly. _Agonizingly_.

"I will never be _convenient,_ or perfect for your image, nor will I ever act according to your level of deranged possessiveness for the night. And if you have a problem with that, even the slightest bit of complaint, then I suggest you leave. Because there is nothing for you here, and no one." She lets out a breath, her chest uncomfortably tight, mouth dry with expectation. "Least of all, me."

He doesn’t move from where he is. He’s four inches deep in snow, but seems hardly perturbed by it.

"I like you. I want to be with you. Completely. Sod everything else." His lips, pink against the stark lack of color surrounding them, smirk at her.

Something in her melts. What an infuriating, glorious smirk.

"Me and you, Granger." He just looks at her, his eyes burning through the cold. “Are you in or not?”

"All right," she says, after a pause, air caught in her throat. She is still trying to make sure she isn’t just concussed and this is all a hallucination.  "Okay. Me and you it is, then."

He flashes her a brilliant smile. "Come on, then.” He walks towards her and grabs her arm, almost dragging her to her front door.

"What are you doing?"

"It's _we_ , Granger, remember?" he says. "And what else does it look like? We're getting started."

She doesn't quite understand, even when he rings the door bell. She can hear the commotion indoors, even past the fast pounding of her own heart. Her eyes widen. "Wait --"

But it's too late, because her front door swings open to her parents in their holiday uniform -- atrociously ugly knitted sweaters, complete with bells and snowmen with scarves -- along with family friends and relatives gathered up behind them, staring.

"Hello," her mum says, looking a little startled. Her gaze darts to Hermione, confused. "Hermione dear, who is--"

"Hello," Malfoy suddenly says. "I'm Draco Malfoy. Hermione's boyfriend."

A bewildered pause goes by. Then, as usual, the unwelcome bark of her Uncle Geoffrey: "Boyfriend? Whatever happened to that Ron bloke? I quite liked him, aside from the tomato-face bit."

As she and Draco are welcomed into the Granger house (her for the second time that night, but with a newfound fascination due to sudden, Adonis-looking boyfriend) (which she noted begrudgingly), peppered with questions and being adored by her aunts, Draco finds a moment to lean into her, his breath hot against her ear.

“Granger,” he murmurs, “that man over there—“

“My Uncle Geoffrey,” she whispers back.

“Listen. I’m only asking as a courtesy. But can I—”

“Use the bathroom down the hall.”

She has to bite back her own smile when he leans back away from her, a slow but triumphant smirk snaking across his face. Honestly, she’d have thought of Obliviating Ron from her uncle’s memory herself, sooner or later.

He squeezes her fingers before letting go, and Hermione Granger decides that yes, this, she can live with. And possibly for a very, very long time.

Fin.


End file.
